S&P futures were down significantly again last evening due to reports that China's exports were down for April. But somehow, by the time our markets opened this morning, the futures were back in positive territory. The recent intraday trading pattern was reversed today; it has been common for the markets to open down, trade farther down and then rebound to recover most of the losses. Today reversed that pattern - we opened higher, traded higher yet, but then gave back a large portion of those gains. SPX traded as high as $1366 before closing at $1358, up $3. RUT closed up $3 at $792. This price action is disconcerting; it suggests the bulls had control early in the day, but they couldn't hold it and the bears pulled it back down. This is basically the opposite of the price action of the past two days. The earlier pattern where the market trades downward, but is pulled back up, suggests the strengthening of support; today's action suggests just the opposite - as soon as the market traded higher, the bears took it back down. So don't let your guard down just yet.

Another interpretation of this price action is that this market is effectively in balance between the bulls and bears, which suggests some choppy sideways action until some news or event tips the market one way or the other. Trading volume declined today with 2.9 billion shares of the S&P 500 trading. Trading on the NYSE was down 16% and trading declined 3% on NASDAQ. The VIX declined to 18.8%, suggesting some lessening of tension, but still on the high side.

Initial unemployment claims for last week were flat at 367k and continuing claims declined 61k to 3.23 million.

My May iron condor stands at a gain of $1,260 with delta = +$31 and theta = +$133. The June position is up $1,220 with delta = +$16 and theta = +$72. Tomorrow I will run the Two Sigma Rule on the May position, but it looks like we will allow both spreads to expire worthless at this point - but that could change overnight!